Sunday, January 26, 2014

Baseless Hatred - Israel's Ultimate Price Tag

Both the Torah and our own long history tell us that our biggest danger to Israel
is what is called baseless hatred between Jews. Some even link the destruction
of Israel's first two commonwealths to that baseless hatred, and not without
reason.

There is a Jewish community in the hill country of the Benjamin region of
Samaria where an incident occurred recently that sheds some light on how
dangerous and destructive this is, a place called Eish Kodesh.

Eish Kodesh is the home of some 30 families and about 100 young children.
The vast majority of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria were built on
land that was either vacant, legally purchased by Jews before the ethnic
cleansing by Jordan in 1948 or on former Jordanian government-owned land. In
the case of Eish Kodesh, the land was vacant and uncontested.Since Eish Kodesh is near the Arab village of Kusra, there is a history of
friction, vandalism, theft and violence.

On January 7th, a large force of border police destroyed the vineyards and
orchards belonging to two of the residents of Eish Kodesh that the Civil
Administration of Judea and Samaria said had been illegally planted, and
confiscated or destroyed privately owned farming equipment belonging to two of
the residents with a Disruptive Use Order even though there were no conflicting
claims. The damages amounted to over 80,000 NIS.

After the destruction at Eish Kodesh, a group of 20 or so young Jewish men,
many of whom live in the vicinity decided to take a symbolic hike through the
area to show solidarity with their neighbors and to demonstrate to their Arab
neighbors that this is their home too, and that they intend to stay. There was
no intention of committing any 'price tag' attack by any of the group. They
claim that similar hike in the same area had happened just the week before
without incident, and the Jewish group was unarmed. They also claim that they
were in an area not attached to the Arab village of Kusra, nor did they try to
enter the village. This version coincides with the testimony of
Pinhasi Brown, one of the group.

What happened is that they were ambushed by an assembled mob of Arabs who
forcibly dragged them into an unfinished building at a construction site in
Kusra, tied them up and began beating them severely with fists, clubs and
pipes. Four of the young men had to be hospitalized afterwards. After about a
half hour, soldiers from the Tzahal arrived and managed, after another 90
minutes, to get the Jews released. The beatings continued while the soldiers
were present, and they reportedly did nothing to stop them.

While some of the Jews were arrested, none of the Arab mob were taken into
custody. The Arabs told the IDF that their captives had come to Kusra to commit
a 'price tag' attack. There's absolutely no evidence that they did, and
considering that this happened at mid-day and none of the group was armed, it's
unlikely that it was. In fact the Arabs of Kusra have a recent
history of making false accusations of this kind of thing before.

In view of this, the IDF not intervening to rescue Jews who had been
kidnapped and essentially lynched is astounding, as is their failure to take the
members of the Arab mob into custody for taking the law into their own hands,
if nothing else. Are there two sets of law in Israel now?

Even worse was some of the media reaction. Prominent Channel 10 news editor
Dror Zaresky wrote a piece in Maariv-NRG confessing his delight in
seeing his fellow Jews beaten and abused:

"The reports in the media and around some of the water coolers,” he
wrote, “ran the gamut from just-the-facts to awarding a prize for courage to
the Palestinian residents of the village near Shechem who settled a long debt
with the youths of the right wing specifically, and with Israel the occupier in
general.”

"I will admit the truth: I, too, had to fight the smile that spread on my
face when I heard the reports from the village,” Zaresky added. “When I first
heard about the 'price tag' action gone bad in the wadis of Samaria, I could
not hide my smile. Unlike many of my friends in the media, I do not see these
actions as disastrous for the country; proportionality was abandoned long ago, in
the way we report these incidents of graffiti and flat tires. And yet, there is
no doubt in my mind that the right wing criminals are trying to disrupt the
lives of many Palestinians – and on the way, they may just succeed in setting
fire to our calm neighborhood in the Middle East.”

Fascinating that Zaresky and his friends, whom call themselves journalists
would automatically judge their fellow Jews guilty without any evidence at all,
especially in view of the Arab residentsofKusra's history of phony
claims. But regardless of what happened, this is exactly the sort of thing I'm
talking about, While Dror Zaresky is certainly free to hate 'right wing
criminals' as he puts it, he seems to have no clue about how dangerous this is.